898. What Is Evangelism?

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. The school was founded in 1927 by the evangelist Dr. Bob Jones Sr. His intent was to make a school where Christ would be the center of everything, so he established daily chapel services. Today, that tradition continues with fervent biblical preaching from the University Chapel platform. Today, we're concluding a three-part series on evangelism. Today's speaker is Dr. Steve Pettit, who for over 29 years was an evangelist and now is president of Bob Jones University. The title of his message is, What is Evangelism? Well, I want to first of all publicly express my gratitude, especially for the last couple of days of the ministry of Dave Doran Jr., who is a church planner in the Detroit area, and he and his wife came down. And I was truly blessed by his messages, by the way he handled the scripture, by the way he effectively communicated to you. And I know he communicated in a way that I could never communicate. I just don't use phrases like, God Amazon's you blessings. And I was thinking, cool, man, I need to remember that one and write it down. If I say anything cool, it's because I stole it from somebody else and wrote it down. And so it was really a blessing and it was, I think, I think you, you were touched by what he had to say.

And so I just want to publicly acknowledge that. And then I'd like to really try to close up this week as we have been focusing our attention really on what started last week with the passion of Christ, the resurrection of Christ. And then this week, our duty and responsibility as a Christian to share the gospel. There are a few things in the Christian life that are absolutely essential for us to do that are actually very hard for us to do consistently.

And those things include the following. Number one, just daily time with God, whether you call it devotions or quiet time or God and I time or Bible reading and prayer, but to do it every single day is hard. Secondly is actually to share the gospel. That is to just be constantly thinking about getting the message out, really my life as a light shining and then spreading the gospel to them.

Those are, that's hard to do. The third thing actually is being consistent in tithing to the local church and giving consistently. And the thing that is important to realize what makes those things hard is that nobody forces you to do that. You're not under constraint to read your Bible. You're not under constraint to witness.

You're really not under constraint to give. All of it is out of a life that is committed to the Lord. So those are things that we need to constantly emphasize in our life. We need to be living these things out. So what I'd like to do today is just be very simple and be very basic with challenging all of us. And I say challenging us, not like I'm the expert and you're the learner, but really all of us as participators and what is most important. And that is the matter of sharing the gospel. And so today my message is really quite simple, and that is what is evangelism?

Because it's like you need to talk about it all the time. It's not like we don't know what it is, but we need to have it constantly reemphasized in our life. And I'd like to begin by saying that this, that everybody who has received the grace of God and salvation has done so because you were evangelized. Somebody told you the good news. It could have been your mother and father. It could have been a Sunday school teacher. It could have been a pastor or youth pastor. It could have been at a camp where you heard an evangelist preach and you heard the gospel, but somebody in your life. And you probably remember that person, who it was.

I remember the first time I heard the gospel. I was a 17 year old public high school teenager, a junior in high school, and a friend of mine, he and I played on the football team. His name was Bill Kneff. We used to call him Wild Bill because he was, he was, he really was pretty crazy.

We'd been buddies since the fourth grade. And he was, he was a, he was a drinker. He was a, he was a hell raiser.

That's what we called him. And so he got saved and his life was transformed. He went from the beer bottle to the Bible study in like three weeks. And one day after school, we were sitting there talking and I said, Bill, you've got religious.

What happened? And he told me he got saved. And for the first time in my life, I had somebody clearly explain to me what it means to be saved. And then he asked me if I wanted to become a Christian. I was evangelized at the age of 17. I didn't get saved.

The fact is I remember walking home that day and my walk home was about three or four blocks from school. And I remember walking home, scared to death that I was going to get hit by a car and be, and die and go straight to hell. But I was evangelized. Every one of us who've ever been saved have been evangelized. So what is evangelism? It's the God ordained means of bringing salvation to all men.

God doesn't use angels to spread his message. God uses people who've experienced grace. Because you know why we can tell the gospel? Because we can tell it authentically.

We can tell it from our life. It's our life that speaks, but it's our life speaking the gospel. And so what then is evangelism?

And let me break it down in three simple points this morning. Because these are very basic, but very important things we need to keep in mind. Number one, evangelism is the preeminent work of all believers. It is the preeminent work. When I say preeminent work, when I'm talking about working, I'm not talking about seeking to glorify God.

We're talking about motivation there. I'm talking about what you do as a Christian. And the most preeminent work of the believer is the work of evangelization. Think about it. After Jesus resurrected from the dead, he met with his disciples. From the time he rose from the dead to the time he ascended into heaven, how many days was it? 40 days. Exactly. So from the resurrection to the ascension, it was 40 days.

Think of that. That's like a little over six weeks, or right at six weeks. And so in that 40 day period, Jesus met with his disciples. Now when you only got 40 days to tell people things, you don't want to tell them 20 things to do. God works by the KISS principle, K-I-S-S. Do you know what that means? Keep it simple what? Not stupid. God doesn't call his people stupid. Saints.

Keep it simple saints. And God gave his disciples one simple command. And that command was repeated in every single gospel.

Listen to what the, what the gospel say. Mark 16, 15. Jesus said, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Matthew 28, verse 18 and 19. He said, go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and the son and the Holy ghost. Luke chapter 24, verse 47. And that repentance and remission of sins should be priest in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

And you are witnesses of these things. And then we come to the book of Acts chapter one. And he says, but you shall receive power. Verse eight.

After the Holy ghost has come upon you and you shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in all Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth. So what is he saying? He's giving one basic command.

It's not complicated. Keep it simple saints that we are to go into the world and we are to spread the gospel. That is our work.

That is our job. So let me say it this way as an implication, if you're not involved in spreading the gospel, you're really not technically doing the work of God. I'm not saying you're not doing good things. I'm not saying you can't be a church secretary.

I'm not saying you can't work in a camp. I'm not saying you can't teach in a Christian school and all of those things we're doing for the glory of God. And I get all that, but if we look in the Bible and what it says, what is the preeminent work of the believer? What's the one command Jesus gave his disciples?

And it's the one command that they definitely obey. And that is after Jesus' ascension into heaven, they went back to the city of Jerusalem and they waited there for 10 days. The power of the spirit of God came and you can't help but read in the book of Acts the exciting work of what happens when God's people obey. Because when you obey God and you spread the gospel, you begin to see the power of the Holy Spirit at work. You want to see the power of the Holy Spirit at work? Open your mouth. Start talking about Jesus and you will see God miraculously working in people's lives.

All you have to do is just start talking about it and things start happening. How many times have you ever shared the gospel with somebody and when you were done, you felt like God actually put you there to talk to that person and you felt you were in the middle of the work of God. Because God's preeminent work is the spreading of the gospel message.

So if we're going to do God's work this summer, that's what we need to do. And then secondly, what is evangelism? It's not only the preeminent work of all believers, but number two is the personal witness of every believer. You see the word evangelize, the word evangelist, and the word gospel all come from the same root word. The Greek word is eu angelis.

Eu meaning good, angelos meaning messenger or news. So we call the gospel essentially the good news. So what does it mean to evangelize? It means to tell the good news. It simply means to tell the story. It's not a story that we have to manipulate. It's not a complicated story.

The fact is actually it's quite simple. It means to tell the story. The gospel means the good news that we're to tell. So when we evangelize, we tell the gospel the good news and we spread that out. The word evangelist means the announcer of the good news. So in 1 Corinthians 15 verse one, it says, moreover brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached. Paul used the same word gospel and preached.

Let me read it this way. I've made unto known to you the good news, which I good newsed unto you. I've made known unto you the evangel, which I've evangelized to you. So quite simply to evangelize is to do what the word means.

It means to tell people good news. We have a gentleman that works for us here, Mr. John Matthews. He's our vice president for advancement. People often ask me, what do you like the best about Bob Jones?

I always say students. And then my second one is always people who give money. And that's actually really, really fun. So I sat with a man recently and he told me he's going to give Bob Jones a million dollars. Now that's fun.

I like eating lunch with you, but I think that one wins over at least for a little while. And whenever we get a special gift, John always comes and tells me. So beginning this week, Monday, we got a check from an estate that came to us of a dear precious lady.

And she left $151,000 to Bob Jones University. You know what? We actually get excited about that. So he called, sometimes he'll say, Hey, Steve, and then I'll go down the hall. Cause I know what he's going to tell me. He said, I think we need to praise the Lord. And he's got the biggest cheesy green grin you've ever seen. Big old grin breaks over his face. And he says, baby, we got a gift. I said, how much?

He said, $151,000. He said, let's give thanks to God. I love that to me is like good news. What is good news? Don't you like to get the good news? Can't you wait to get your report card next week? If you're a senior, can't you wait to hear the good news that you're actually, you're actually really going to graduate? How many of you have ever had nightmares that you didn't graduate? Anybody ever have those nightmares? I mean, as I mean, you know, it's really getting bad when you're having nightmares and in the nightmare, the story is that you, you didn't finish two classes and you got to come back next semester.

I mean, I had those nightmares from college for like 10 years, but the good news, the good news is that you're going to graduate. That's good news. What is the gospel? It's good news. And what are we to do?

Where to tell the good news? The new Testament presents different words that describe the duty of telling the good news. For example, one of those words is that we're called to be stewards. What is a steward is somebody who's been entrusted with a message. Therefore we have a responsibility. We've been given information and where to go tell it. Think about it. If a doctor knows the cure for cancer and he knows somebody who has cancer and he doesn't tell them the good news that they can be cured.

What kind of doctor is that? What kind of steward are we? When we know that this person could be saved from eternal judgment in hell and we don't for whatever reason and whatever excuse tell them that we're a steward. Secondly, we're a herald. What is a herald? A herald is somebody who makes a public announcement and he is one who comes in his responsibility is to deliver the message exactly as it was given.

Not to add, not to alter, not to admit anything. As a herald we are accurate in telling of the good news. That's what we're to be doing.

Tell the people the news. And then third, we're an ambassador. We're like Nikki Haley as a UN ambassador. We represent the leader. We represent a king and therefore we're to speak with authority in telling the good news. We're to be responsible.

We are to be accurate and we are to be authoritative. We can come with this message and tell people the gospel of Jesus Christ. A number of years ago I had the privilege of spending almost a little over a month in the country of Kenya, Africa and I was with evangelist Tom Farrell.

Many of you know Tom. And we were invited to go into a village where we had to actually hike into the village after a long ride and it was a village of Maasai warriors. I mean these were scary looking dudes. They wore, I mean they're the loincloths and the spears and the whole nine yards. And so we went into this village.

They had never had a white man in the village. We were the first white people they'd ever seen. And so we got into this village and they wanted, they actually wanted a missionary to come and speak to them.

And so we gathered them together. All the men sat under one tree and all the women and children sat under another tree and for about an hour to an hour and a half we preached the gospel to them. We actually preached it in English.

They translated it into Swahili and then they translated it into Maasai. And we started Genesis chapters one, two and three. And then we came to Genesis three, how God created the world, how man fell in the sand but God made a promise in Genesis three. And then we went to John chapter three. And at the end of that time of communicating to them the gospel, an invitation was given and eight adult men accepted Jesus as their savior.

And it was one of the most exciting experiences that we've ever had. And we felt like we were ambassadors arriving into a village who had never heard about the king. And they opened their heart and received the king into our lives. This is what Bible evangelism is all about. For the sake of clarity, however, we need to be clear what evangelism is not. It's not, for example, imposing our religious views on another person.

People equate evangelism with this idea somehow that I'm imposing my religion on another person. But that's only if Christianity is subjectively true. But what Christianity is, is it's not a subjective philosophy about life. But rather it is stating the historical events of what Christ did. To be a witness means something happened.

It's to tell the truth in the court of law. And what we are doing is we're telling the objective reality that a man named Jesus came into this world. He was born of a virgin. He lived a sinless life.

He was crucified on a cross and he resurrected from the dead and he came to be our savior from sin. So we have to understand that this is not just giving us somehow a religious opinion. Then secondly, let me say that it is not us who are saving people.

We are witnesses. We are not saviors. I think it has to be clear to us that unless God works in people's hearts, even the message itself won't change people's lives. Sometimes I think we have a tendency today to try to help the gospel so that we do things to to somehow soften the message that it's not really that strong.

But folks, when you are sick, you want the strongest medicine you can get to get the sickness out. The only cure for the sin-sick soul is the bloody sacrificial death of Jesus and that blood alone can wash your sins away. And so it's the declaration of the message and the Lord does the saving work.

We cannot nationalize and we cannot legalize Christianity. It is the supernatural work of grace within the human heart. And then let me say number three, that evangelism is not just doing social work. I greatly, and I mean this seriously, I greatly appreciate the efforts of what we're trying to do in our community effort here in our Beyond work here and all of that is very important.

And it's especially important for a university to do that for the community. But I do want to be clear that that in itself is not gospel preaching. Gospel preaching is the declaration of the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

People have problems in society that are horizontal in the sense that we are, we have struggles within our own culture. But the answer to all of man's problems ultimately is our vertical relationship with the Lord. The greatest need of people is to believe the gospel and repent of their sins. And then let me say number four, that this is not just being involved in apologetics. People often assume that defending the faith by answering questions and the objections of skeptics is sufficient for people to be saved.

And if a skeptic is looking for truth, then oftentimes that's where apologetics come in. But you can convince people in the head, but not convert them in the heart. God's got to change the heart. God's got to do a supernatural work of grace in their souls. So as we finish then, what is evangelism? And let me say this, evangelism is telling people the good news and evangelism is the persuasive winning of the unbeliever. Involved in evangelism, I'm trying to persuade people to trust the gospel. Think about it, embedded in the gospel message is a clear intent.

It is to see the hearer converted. It is not simply imparting truth to them, but it's trying to persuade them to hear and believe the good news. I was saved over a period of time, but I heard the gospel on a number of occasions. And when I did hear the gospel, the people that tried to share the gospel with me always tried to persuade me.

My best friend in college, a fellow named Maxie Birch, he's a professor at John Brown University in Arkansas. He's head of their graduate religious studies. And he used to tell me all the time as we would walk back and forth from the soccer field from practice, he would say to me, pet it, pet it, you need to get saved. You need to get saved. That's a part of evangelism. Evangelism not just telling them the message, okay, that's the first half, but in every game there's a second half. The second half is you need to apply that, because the Bible says you're actually in God's stead or in God's place as his ambassador, and you are trying to persuade people to come to Jesus Christ.

The word convert means to turn. The preacher is the one who's trying to convert the sinner. Listen to what it says of John the Baptist, many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord. Listen to what it says of Paul. He says Paul is going to be sent to open the eyes of the blind and to turn them from darkness to light.

And when Paul preached, he called people to repent and turn to God. We are called to be fishers of men. Whenever you go fishing, you have an intention. What is the intention?

It's not to feed fish, it's to catch fish. And that is exactly what we're doing. Our intention is to win people to Jesus Christ. Listen to what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9 verse 19. I love these verses. He says, for though I be free from all men, yet I've made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more.

The word gain means to win. And unto the Jews, I became as a Jew that I might gain the Jews. To them that are under the law as under the law that I might gain them that are under the law. To them that are without law as without law that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became as weak that I might gain the weak.

I am made all things to all men that I might by all means save some. We used to use a term a lot, it's called soul winning. We were going to go soul winning. And somehow people have a tendency to take issue with words and they would go, well, you're not really winning souls, God wins the souls.

But actually, if you're going to be really accurate, it's actually both of us are involved. Obviously, God has to do the work, but he does the work through the evangelization. And so actually, God has given us the wonderful privilege of winning souls to Jesus Christ. I hope this summer that the Lord will give you the privilege, and I hope every one of you will have this privilege, of winning somebody to Christ. How many of you would love to win somebody to the Lord this summer? Would you raise your hand?

I would love to do that. It is life's greatest blessing to be the one that God uses to win souls. I'm going to close by reading you a card. I got this yesterday from a student who's graduating next week.

I love it. I want to read it to you. I came here as an unsafe freshman, sometimes feeling proud that I didn't need God and that over the years I had developed a coldness and indifference towards my obvious need for salvation. I was convinced that BJU couldn't change anything about that either and that God could never break me. But then during the first evangelistic service you held, it was so clear to me that I needed to get saved. I remember sitting in my chapel seat, literally fighting God and telling him to ask me again in a year. I walked out of that service unsaved, terrified that God had given up on me by now, but still arrogant enough to feel like I didn't need him. And then during the second service, all the thoughts from the previous night that I'd had that I had been able to push away during the day came rushing over me again.

It was that night after another fight between stubborn me and my ever-loving God after many tears that I was able to get saved by his grace. And this person is graduating, Lord willing, next week. To me, that's awesome. That's the privilege God has given all of us. It doesn't take great talent.

It doesn't take great argumentative skills. It takes a loving heart who's willing to tell a clear story to a person that is in great need, and you really care. And God will use you to do his work into honor's name. May God give us the grace to do that this summer. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the grace of God that saves us from our sins. In Jesus' name.

Amen. Today's speaker was Dr. Steve Pettit, president of Bob Jones University. You know, these daily programs are made possible by the support of the many friends of Bob Jones University and this radio ministry. If you appreciate these programs and benefit from the faithful preaching and teaching of God's Word, would you consider sending us a special financial gift today? You can easily do that through the website, thedailyplatform.com, and then click on the Give button on the home page. I'm Steve Pettit, President of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Thank you for listening to The Daily Platform. If you're looking for a regionally accredited Christian liberal arts university, I invite you to visit our campus and see how God is working in the lives of our students. For more information about Bob Jones University, visit www.bju.edu or call 800-252-6363. We hope you'll join us again next week as we study God's Word together on The Daily Platform.